Hearkening back to this post, let's do another "who would win in a fight?" Who would win in a fight between Gary Gygax of Dungeons and Dragons fame and Bill Gothard of The Institute in Basic Life Principles.
According to Al Hsu of The Suburban Christian we don't have to wonder - the fight was held and Gary Gygax won.
But as the New York Times article notes, D&D and the fantasy roleplaying motif has thoroughly permeated our collective consciousness:
We live in Gary Gygax’s world. The most popular books on earth are fantasy novels about wizards and magic swords. The most popular movies are about characters from superhero comic books. The most popular TV shows look like elaborate role-playing games: intricate, hidden-clue-laden science fiction stories connected to impossibly mathematical games that live both online and in the real world.
Rogers traces the ripple effects of D&D in influencing and shaping contemporary gaming culture, technology advances, and even Google and Facebook. He writes:
Mr. Gygax’s genius was to give players a way to inhabit the characters inside their games, rather than to merely command faceless hordes, as you did in, say, the board game Risk. Roll the dice and you generated a character who was quantified by personal attributes like strength or intelligence.
Al comments:
It occurs to me now that in the Gygax vs. Gothard smackdown, Gygax ultimately triumphed. Why? I think because whereas Gothard and other conservative Christians defensively attacked D&D out of fears of Satan worship, Gygax and D&D created an appealing world and fascinating narrative that people could enter into. It was participatory, and it also created community. Rogers notes, "You needed at least three people to play — two adventurers and one Dungeon Master to guide the game — so Dungeons & Dragons was social. Demented and sad, but social."
In short, Gygax created culture, whereas Gothard merely condemned culture. Gothard did not create a compelling alternative to D&D - he merely argued that it was evil. Whatever one might think about his perspective, the larger issue for Christians is whether we will create compelling, dramatic narratives and stories for people to participate in, or if we only react against what other people create. Andy Crouch's forthcoming Culture Making argues that Christians cannot change the culture by condemning it, critiquing it, copying it or consuming it. The only way to change culture is to create more culture.
I went to my first Gothard seminar in 1980 and was fully on board with the whole agenda. D & D and pretty much all of pop culture was of the devil, rock music was of the devil (Amy Grant = bad, Sandi Patty = good) and so I understand where he is coming from. I think another example that reinforces Al's point is the whole MTV thing. Christians focused on demonizing MTV and didn't create an alternative (well, I suppose one could call the whole CCM thing an alternative of sorts) and yet MTV won the day.
It seems to me the same things are happening now with social networking and online worlds like Second Life. Many Christians can talk eloquently about what's wrong with them, but few can provide compelling alternatives.
HT - Milton Stanley at Transforming Sermons
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